Eric Arthur Gardner (27 June 1881 – 24 May 1905) was an

Australian rules football Australian football, also called Australian rules football or Aussie rules, or more simply football or footy, is a contact sport played between two teams of 18 players on an Australian rules football playing field, oval field, often a modified ...

er who played with

Melbourne Melbourne ( , ; Boonwurrung language, Boonwurrung/ or ) is the List of Australian capital cities, capital and List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city of the States and territories of Australia, Australian state of Victori ...

in the

Victorian Football League The Victorian Football League (VFL) is an Australian rules football competition in Australia operated by the Australian Football League (AFL) as a second-tier, regional, semi-professional competition. It includes teams from clubs based in east ...

(VFL). The younger brother of

Corrie Gardner Henry Corris "Corrie" Gardner (12 March 1879 – 6 August 1960) was an Australian track and field athlete who competed in the 1904 Summer Olympics, and played Australian rules football for Essendon Football Club and Melbourne Football Club. G ...

, Eric was a long kicking forward. He played as a wingman and missed out on playing in Melbourne's

1900 As of March 1 ( O.S. February 17), when the Julian calendar acknowledged a leap day and the Gregorian calendar did not, the Julian calendar fell one day further behind, bringing the difference to 13 days until February 28 ( O.S. February 15 ...

premiership side, in his debut season, through injury. He entered

Trinity College (University of Melbourne) Trinity College is the oldest residential college of the University of Melbourne, the first university in the colony of Victoria, Australia. The college was opened in 1872 on a site granted to the Church of England by the government of Victo ...

in 1900, where he was a member of the football team that won the 1902 intercollegiate premiership, and also participated in athletics, winning the 120-yard hurdles and coming third in the long jump and at the University sports day in 1902."Melbourne University Sports", ''Argus'', 3 June 1902, p. 8. Gardner died young in 1905 while in Sweden.

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* 1881 births 1905 deaths Australian rules footballers from Melbourne Melbourne Football Club players People educated at Melbourne Grammar School People educated at Trinity College (University of Melbourne) People from Hawthorn, Victoria 19th-century Australian sportsmen 20th-century Australian sportsmen {{AFL-bio-1881-stub